Interspecies Refugium: A Koala Rehabilitation Landscape Where Visitors, Carers and Wildlife Share One Forest

Most wildlife hospitals are built like clinics that happen to sit near trees. Interspecies Refugium reverses that order: the forest is the primary structure, and the architecture slips into it as a sequence of lightweight timber pavilions, walkways and lookouts. Its central argument is that rehabilitating a koala is a spatial process as much as a medical one. An animal moves from critical care to open canopy along a choreographed path, while humans watch, learn and work alongside it without breaking the chain of recovery.

Designed by Marina Pizzotti and Suhas Vasudeva, the proposal was shortlisted in Haven 2020. The site sits in the Mount Tamborine region of Australia, within a rural living zone squeezed between two expanding urban growth areas. That position matters. Koalas face bushfires, habitat loss, disease, vehicle strikes and urban expansion, and this strip of land is where those pressures converge. The designers treat it as a hinge: rehabilitation centre, ecological refuge, educational institution and public destination at once, with the larger ambition of consolidating fragmented wildlife corridors.

A Building Peeled Into Layers Over Remnant Bushland

The exploded axonometric is the clearest statement of method. Roof, timber structure, built form and ground plane are separated into distinct strata, hovering above an aerial view of terracotta-roofed buildings scattered through bushland. Read together, the layers show a project that resists being a single object. The built footprint is fragmented and threaded between existing tree cover rather than cleared around it.

This is where the masterplan's priorities become legible. Remnant vegetation stays in place, interventions follow the topography, and the arrangement avoids interrupting water runoff and animal movement. A network of environmental links ties forest patches, koala habitat, pedestrian routes and water systems together, so the drawing reads less as a building diagram than as a map of relationships the site already contains.

Filtered Shade as the Threshold Between Plaza and Forest

The arrival sequence leans on one material move: slatted timber that filters light. In the atrium view, a screened facade and slatted canopy sit beside a herringbone brick plaza where visitors gather in afternoon shade. Moving inward, the courtyard swaps brick for timber flooring, and roof fins break the sun into dappled patterns over fern planting and an exhibition panel.

The gradient is deliberate. Hard, civic paving gives way to softer surfaces and denser planting, preparing visitors for the forest before they enter it. The exhibition space is not a sealed gallery but a shaded outdoor room, which suits a programme whose subject is the landscape just beyond the screen. Education here happens under the same light conditions the animals live in.

Care Pavilions Seen, But Not Entered

The most consequential decision in the plan is invisible in a single render: the separation of three flows, for visitors, staff and wildlife, which run independently and cross only at controlled points. This view captures one of those points. From behind a signage balustrade, two visitors photograph a cluster of low timber-roofed care pavilions sitting among eucalyptus. They are close enough to see the work of rehabilitation and far enough to leave it undisturbed.

The pavilions themselves stay modest in height, tucked under the canopy rather than competing with it. They host the start of the rehabilitation sequence, critical care and medical treatment, before animals progress to semi-covered rehabilitation areas and finally outdoor rewilding zones. Distributing these stages across the site, linked by low-impact paths, gives each step its own degree of exposure to the forest, a gradual reintroduction expressed as distance and enclosure.

Reading the Forest From Several Heights

Where the care zones keep people at a distance horizontally, the observation tower and treetop walk bring them close vertically. The tower stacks timber beams and mesh walkways above a seating area, with elevated boardwalks branching outward as parrots cross the sky. The treetop walk then carries a curving timber balustrade straight through the eucalyptus canopy, where visitors lean over the rail toward koalas sitting in the branches.

Lifting the public route serves two ends. Ecologically, the walkways float above sensitive ground, leaving understorey and runoff patterns intact. Experientially, they place visitors in the koala's own territory, the upper canopy, rather than asking the animal to come down to a viewing window. The curve of the walk avoids trunks rather than cutting through them, and it makes the case that observation can be immersive without being intrusive.

The Carer Room as a Shared Interior

The final render is the most intimate. A timber-framed carer room is built around a living tree trunk, with people reading beside koalas and the space opening directly onto eucalyptus in warm afternoon light. It is the one place where the three flows effectively merge, and the architecture responds with the domestic scale of a room you might find in a house.

This image carries the project's title most literally. Interspecies here does not mean humans observing animals from across a moat; it means sharing an interior with them under conditions designed for both. The tree inside the room is a small, telling gesture. Even at its most enclosed, the building defers to the forest's structure.

Why This Project Matters

Interspecies Refugium is valuable because it treats circulation as care. By separating visitor, staff and wildlife movement and then staging carefully controlled overlaps, Pizzotti and Vasudeva turn a technical requirement into the organising idea of the whole plan. The rehabilitation sequence, from critical care through semi-covered enclosures to open rewilding zones, is not hidden in a back-of-house block; it is spread across the landscape and made partly visible, so that recovery becomes something the public can understand without interfering in it.

The proposal also points to a broader shift for architecture at the urban fringe. Sited between two growth areas, it argues that the land in between can do more than buffer development: it can repair corridors, keep remnant vegetation intact and host public life at the same time. Lightweight timber, elevated paths and a fragmented footprint are familiar tools, but here they are deployed in service of an animal's needs first. That ordering of priorities is the lesson worth carrying forward.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Marina Pizzotti, Suhas Vasudeva

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Project credits: Interspecies Refugium by Marina Pizzotti, Suhas Vasudeva Haven 2020 (uni.xyz).